Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business

As someone who only knew of Carmen Miranda as a caricature in cartoons and a Halloween costume worn by friends, I found this film very enlightening. Whatever might be missing in the film about the deeper details of her life, it is still an eye-opening documentary that at least shines some light on a real person behind the character. I thought this was a very respectful documentary and perhaps purposefully restrained for that reason. Maybe more could have been done, but I for one am glad that at least this much was there for me to see. I have a new respect for Carmen Miranda and find that I'm motivated now to seek more about her on my own.

As a lover of Brazilian culture, I was rather disappointed by the film, which turns out to be a rather conventional 90's showbiz bio.

Yes, Carmen was exploited and broken behind that headdress. The film did a good job of bringing out the pathos - but

that's hardly a surprise.

The problem is, having done that, it didn't go any further in showing us the real woman behind the mask. The film projects her as nothing but a helpless victim of Hollywood, when her early life clearly indicated a strong and wily character. She must have put up a few fights - both internally and out there - and _this_ is the fascinating stuff. Remember that she was financially independent and emotionally not alone. Although in exile, she was always surrounded by family and, quite often, other Brazilian expatriate friends (among them one of the fathers of Bossa Nova, Vinicius --). She had choices. She didn't have to end that way and yet she did -- chose to marry an American brute and chose to leave Brazil again, right out of convalescence. This is the true mystery, and this film brings us no closer.

In the other direction, the film also failed to place Carmen in context of the development of Brazilian music. Was she a true artist, or merely a star - co-opting music of the poor for the consumption of a more respectable audience? And what is her true legacy as Brazil's "cultural ambassador"? Brazil may have rejected her, but it has never forgotten or ignored her (the funeral scene proved that). Yet once again we

had no idea what Carmen means to an average Brazilian today.

Watching this film, I kept getting reminded of Edith Piaf. Like her, Carmen's life has enough paradoxes for two or three movies. Regrettably, we are given less than one.

For starters, I learned much about the Queen of Kiche; also, I learned that she was worthy of a documentary, certainly. Her beginnings in Brazil, her birth in Portugual, this section of the documentary was well done. Clearly this was the strongest section, including how she linked her fame to superfame in the U.S.. She was a Brazilian superstar long before she went to the U.S. Once in the U.S., up she went within weeks, into Celebrity Heaven. But from there, the documentary does become somewhat hazy, creating more questions than it answers. I do agree with one ImDB reviewer: They, like me, wonder how much of a struggle >did< she make, i.e. to break away from the "living cartoon" caricature she'd become by 1944/45? I mean, that was an "out there" demeaning image, and extremely limiting for a singer/dancer. This issue does not come into focus. I found the wistful, spacy narration of the director/producer somewhat pretentious, but at times it worked for me. Yes, I too agree (with another reviewer) that her marriage to the meatheaded producer just rather popped up and hung there. But, I got the impression, that time limitations lock-stepped them into going light on that. She was a serious, family oriented Roman Catholic, and that rules out divorce--and that point is covered. When Ms. Miranda died (1955) divorce wasn't even allowed in major Catholic countries! Dumping Meathead just would have been, to her and family, not an option. Finally, she made choices--she had choices. Some of these are not explained well enough. But, all in all, I don't consider this a weak effort, but a good one. Worth viewing.

By now, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Hollywood during the "golden years" under the studio system -- specifically the 30s, 40s and 50s -- was no place for the faint of heart. Many an icon was created which turned on its portrayer, typecasting them for eternity to a single image or even a single role. In Carmen Miranda's case, she will be forever remembered, at least by most Americans, as the oversexed, thickly-accented Latina "bombshell," with any of a number of names ending in "-ita," elevating the "exotic" stereotype of "Souse Americans" to a fine art with grotesquely bright, overdone Technicolor costumes and pounds of gaudy jewelry draped everywhere her tiny body could carry it. Carmen was a major recording star in her adopted homeland of Brazil for the majority of the 1930s, certainly long before most Americans had even heard of her. However, she came to the U.S. in 1939 and proceeded to make a career as a professional "hot-cha-cha gal" in fourteen films, each campier than the last.

Director Helena Solberg, who was a child at the time of Miranda's death in 1955, appears to have nurtured a lifelong obsession with the late star. Her film documentary, "Bananas is My Business," is, to be fair, obviously a labor of affection and wistfulness that Carmen's talents were stolen from the world at the comparatively young age of forty-six. However, the film reeks of nineties-style "exposure therapy," as if the fact that Carmen fell victim to prescription drugs and a violent husband and frustration over not being allowed to play anyone but caricature-laden Carmencita-type spitfires was the major defining element of her life.

This woman clawed her way out of childhood poverty and not only conquered the heavily male-dominated music business in Brazil, but then proceeded to become the highest-paid woman in the entire United States in 1944. Yes, she married an asshole and she kept the kind of hectic schedule that couldn't be maintained for long without chemical intervention. She saw doors closed to her because she was a woman and a Latina and the fact that she could speak far better English than was usually quoted from her was probably very frustrating indeed. But how do we know she died miserable?

I would rather have seen more remembrances from people who actually knew Carmen (although I realize that many of her contemporaries in Hollywood were already deceased when this documentary was made. Oh, to have known what Edward Everett Horton would have said of her! LOL). Ms. Solberg's psychobabble ruminations on how Carmen "must" have felt about this or that event in her life became tiresome very quickly and offensive in the final analysis.

Carmen Miranda was more than another Judy Garland that Hollywood chewed up and spit out. I think some things are best remembered without attempting to analyze them.

This was a very odd documentary. Normally, I enjoy this forum of film. I enjoy learning about a person or events that I normally would never learn about. I love learning about famous people that to the normal eye would have a normal life, but behind the scenes it was nothing but trials and tribulations. The only issue I have is that sometimes it is hard to create a good documentary, or just another episode of E! True Hollywood Stories. That is exactly the line that Carmen Miranda: Bananas is my Business crosses.

This film goes from decent documentary into a slime fest for the "bombshell" beauty. The problem with this film is that the filmmaker takes too many assumptions with Carmen. For example, there are some scenes that were not captured on film when Carmen was alive, so the director chose to go ahead and place an actress (or in this very odd case and ACTOR) in a reenacting role of Carmen. There were several moments of this film where it would skip from filmed Carmen, to this actor Carmen and the director would take certain risks.

These risks should not be taken when creating a documentary. Why? Because again you are crossing a line. You are taking a documentary, one that lives in the world of fiction, and throw in areas of non-fiction. This cannot happen. You cannot jump genres. How is your audience to believe you? After watching some truths from the taped Carmen from her films, I had trouble jumping from one to the other. I couldn't keep track on what the director wanted to show as "real" and what was dramatized. That is definitely no way to create a story. For example, we open this film to Carmen walking around in her bath robe and suddenly falls, we witness the mirror that Carmen is carrying shatter in front of her. Now I know that the director was trying to show that a beauty, concerned most about her appearance, had a mirror (the sheer instrument of vanity) break in front of her. BUT THIS NEVER HAPPENED. I had to remind myself that the director was taking a chance here, causing my stomach to go down south. Can directors of documentaries take these chances?

Can they dabble the line between fiction and non-fiction while trying to tell a "true" story? My answer friends, is NO. But again, all I am is a mere critic, no director of documentaries.

Grade: ** out of *****